Self Deception
by mlast
Summary: The inner battle between Smith and his conscience rages... will he ever be able to escape? Suicide and horror scenes
1. Prologue: The Glass Shards

Disclaimer: The Matrix and all the characters to do with it do not belong to me. I just write about them. It's a living.  
  
Author's notes: Nearly (note: I said nearly) all words in italics come from the song Self Deception, by Lacuna Coil. Main inspiration for this story.  
  
***  
  
Prologue: The Glass Shards  
  
"Wow!"  
  
"It's so cool in here!"  
  
"Yeah!"  
  
Their tiny voices echoed off the empty walls of the derelict house in the heart of the system. Sounding so excited at their discovery, yet it soon was to be short-lived.  
  
They were five young children, no older than ten years, at the rebellious stage, wanting to go explore the world. To them, finding an empty house such as this one was like visiting a distant planet.  
  
The first, a mischievous little boy, opened the dusty door to one of the upstairs rooms of that cavernous house. Feeling rather apprehensive and courageous at the same time, the five watched as the door creaked open as if in slow motion, creating a new pathway to the deeper depths of the house. And they entered the room.  
  
Gasping at their expense, they discovered a large and empty room. The dust flew around them in a spiral like swarms of flies lusting for blood, the sunlight steaming in from one lonely window on the far side. The rest of the room was bathed in shadows.  
  
As each child made their way tentatively into the heart of the room, the naked wood of the floor beneath them creaked perilously, threatening the children, telling them it was safer at home than to be staring this house in the face.  
  
There was a red substance splattered over one of the weary walls, and it looked suspiciously like blood in the cold light of the day outside. Yet the children did not notice this as their attention was brought to a small shining object in the corner of the room.  
  
"Look at this!"  
  
One child, a dark haired girl, ran over to the object, and picked it up. It shimmered in the light as she held it up above her head like a trophy. It was a green glass bottle, scratched from the darkened claws of the shadows of the house, resting here for so long that it had been left behind in time.  
  
"A bottle!"  
  
"Oh, wow!"  
  
"A bottle, here!"  
  
Clearly the children had found a treasure of the deep, left, in their eyes, by some deadly pirate in his rush to escape from the enemy, or perhaps by a fair princess who had once left a message inside it for a prince to come and rescue her....  
  
As each child made up their own adventure for the bottle, another small boy of the group began to sing.  
  
"Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall!"  
  
The rest of the children joined in, and soon, the room was filled with bouncing voices of the victorious explorers.  
  
Yet the boy who had first opened the door to the treasure room was still not satisfied. He eyed the glass bottle, so delicate in the dark haired girl's hands, and suddenly shot out a greedy arm and snatched the glass from her grasp.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
Squeals erupted amidst the joyous singing, and it was not long before there was a struggle against the boy and the remaining four children, who now were having their own adventure, a struggle for the cup, survival of the fittest.  
  
The struggle became deeper. Bodies thrashed against the floor, loudly and startlingly brutal in the darkness of the room, where the shadows seemed to be holding their breath. The noises were so loud; the children did not notice the faint sound of heavy and powerful footsteps on the stairs.  
  
A fair haired boy gave the bottle a tremendous tug, and the bottle broke free of the mischievous boy's grip, and flew across the room, catching the sun's rays as it went.  
  
"NO!"  
  
Every child in the place stood up and gave a cry as they watched their treasure's progress in horror. The glass bottle hit the floor and shattered into a million shining pieces upon the floor. It had been destroyed - or had it?  
  
For as the children continued to watch, they saw the glass shards repair themselves as if the moment was being rewound, as if time itself was being manipulated....  
  
And a second later, a shining green bottle stood on the floor before them, no longer a bundle of glass shards. The children stared. Had they discovered a timeloop? Or something altogether more sinister?  
  
They were young. They did not understand the importance of their discovery, or the significance it would have if they found out about the world that they really lived in.  
  
However, they did not have time to dwell on the extraordinary event that had just taken place, for the door suddenly swung open with a deafening bang, scattering dust into the air like autumn leaves. And in the doorway there were three sinister looking men in identical black suits and matching sunglasses, all with the same blank expression.  
  
One of the men, the one in the middle, stepped forward, seemingly looking at the motionless bottle in the middle of the floor. The children moved back into the confinements of the daylight near the window, maybe hoping it would protect them from these intruders.  
  
The man who had made the first move bent down to the bottle, tapped it with a curious finger. The bottle wobbled, but remained the same. The man straightened up and turned to his comrades.  
  
"It was this one."  
  
His voice chilled the children to their tiny bones. It was so.... Stiff and unhumanlike. One of the children, a timid little boy, actually started to cry, his sobs echoing into the shadows and reaching the ears of the three men before them.  
  
The man that had spoken turned to the five children; his sunglasses catching a few rays of sunlight from the window they were huddled against. He was definitely the leader of his group. Slowly, and with great power, he walked up to the crying child, whose sobs seemed to grow louder as the man bent down before him.  
  
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, in a suspiciously gentle voice. The child's cries calmed down, yet he was still distressed as he stared into the stranger's cold blank lenses. Suddenly he wished he were at home with his mother and father.  
  
"All I want to know," the man continued, this time including the rest of the children in his gaze, "is what just happened to the bottle that stands behind me now."  
  
The crying boy gave a whimper, but the mischievous boy spoke up. He was not scared of the man, like his cowardly friends were. He would show them.  
  
"It smashed on the floor, then it went back together."  
  
Hearing his voice gave his friends confidence to air their views, too.  
  
"It was like a tape going backwards!"  
  
"Scary!"  
  
"Weird!"  
  
"It was.... Like time was being sent backwards," said a quiet little girl in a hushed voice. The remaining children nodded at her words in earnest.  
  
"Yeah, what she said."  
  
"Like something was wrong with time."  
  
The man in the black suit before them waited until their voices died down, then stood up straight.  
  
"Just as I thought."  
  
His colleagues behind him nodded in unison. They moved forward slightly, ready to make a move if necessary.  
  
Then the man in the middle turned to look at the children again. And he slowly reached up and took off his sunglasses.  
  
The children saw that his eyes were blue, the coldest and cruelest shade of blue they probably would ever see. There was something hidden behind the blue that was boring into their minds, extracting information to be analyzed, to be used against them. Instantly the children knew that this man was bad. And so were his comrades. But it was too late now. Because they blocked the only way of escape out of here alive....  
  
"Do you know who I am?" the man softly asked them, danger dancing on every syllable of his words. The children recoiled as far as they could, up against the wall. Their blank looks supplied the man with an answer.  
  
"I am here to make sure that you do not tell anyone about what you have just seen. It was all in your minds, understand? No one is to know."  
  
"It wasn't in our minds!" shouted the naughty boy suddenly from the front of the group. The other children chorused their agreement, bombarding the man in the suit. He stood up and hastily put his sunglasses back over his eyes, a scowl of great dislike upon his face. He signalled to his colleagues.  
  
"Take them!"  
  
Instantaneously, the two men behind him marched forward in unison and automatically grabbed two of the children each, clamping strong hands around each child's mouth. They immediately screamed and struggled, but they were no match for the men. Then the leader advanced upon the remaining child, their leader, the one who had discovered the room in the first place. He looked up at the man towering over him with large frightened eyes.  
  
"You will not ignore the words of an Agent!"  
  
Then the man roughly grabbed the boy by his neck and dragged him away into the shadows of the outer world. The two remaining men followed suit with the other four.  
  
Moments later, bloodcurdling screams could be heard from the downstairs of the same house, screams that told listeners that five children were being murdered.  
  
Then all was still. All was calm.  
  
All was left uncovered again. 


	2. Chapter 1: A Return Feeling

**1: A Return Feeling**

"The children found nothing out."

"And told nobody."

"They are dead now anyway."

"It shall not be discovered."

Their office was crowded with two of the Agents' voices all at once. Only one remained unspoken. The one that had spoken first to those children...

He was fighting an inner battle with his programming, which was acting sceptical again. He did not feel wrong, yet there was not supposed to be any discordant ideas within him. His colleagues spoke of the murders casually in front of his face, and it was making him sick. He suddenly stood up and banged his fists as hard as he could against the desk.

"Those children almost found out that their world was nothing but an illusion! They were that close! And yet you still speak of their demise in that offhand way? You are not as intelligent as I thought you were!"

He sat down again, feeling better somehow. His colleagues looked at him with concern.

"Smith, are you feeling right?"

_Are you feeling right? Are you feeling right?     _

The words echoed inside the Agent Smith's head, confused at first glance, feeling mixed up as one, never understanding the tongue of the Humans.

_I'll never waste another day_

_Searching to find the reason_

_Why did I choose to play this game?_

_This goes too far_

_I'll take no more_

"I can't take it anymore." Agent Smith stood up, and without a second glance at his colleagues, he strode out of the room.

***

Smith was beginning to have inner doubts, just like all the humans he had killed in his time, including those children, only yesterday. How could everything become so mixed up all of a sudden? 

He marched down the sidewalk, ignoring the viruses of the system, glaring and hating everything he saw through his sunglasses. And soon he reached the destination he had thought about non-stop since finding it the day before...

He entered the house, the dust filling his years, fading his suit, calling him a human. He ignored its calls, and advanced upstairs to the forsaken room unearthed only recently...

And yes, what Smith was searching for was still here. The glass bottle stood, as good as new, calm as clarity, in the centre of the room, carefully balanced in the mixture of light and shadow in the refuge Smith had found once again.

Smith bent down to the bottle and delicately picked it up in his cold fingers, turning it over and over again in his hand, his expression thoughtful.

The bottle seemed to be speaking to him:

_I played the part and took the blame_

_While you pretend nothing is real_

_Life turned to night as you're asleep_

_Blood flowing down, is this a dream?_

Yes, the blood was flowing down. The children had failed to notice it, but Smith could not ignore it. The stains of red on the opposite wall that called out to him, engulfing him in its crimson waves of doubt and anxiety, things that an Agent should not have to feel in his existence...

The whole world Smith lived in was a dream. So how could the pain inside his chest be so real?

Was he really that choked up at the fact that he had no existence? 


	3. Chapter 2: His Self Deception

**2: His Self-Deception**

Smith wanted to forget those forsaken children. He wanted to forget the bottle, forget the system, forget his existence. Yet he was bound here to the memories of his hard drive, and they could never be erased. They stirred feeling within him. He did not like it. 

And yet the thought of deletion was so beautiful, a perfect way out of his maze...

Liar, you tempt me 

Smith shook his head. He had become so lost in his thoughts; he had not noticed the sun had set and darkness stared at him through the blank window of the room. The bottle dropped from his grip and spoke to him no more, rolling to a stop in a patch of moonlight.

I don't know what to do 

_No guilt is in my heart_

_I don't know what to do_

_I'm not the reason_

Smith felt as if he was trapped inside that bottle. His sunglasses were the glass walls surrounding his eyes, offering protection no more, only imprisonment from his own feelings. What was happening inside him? Did he even know anymore?

He used to be so sure of himself. Now he could find no reassurance from anybody, not even his own self. He was deceiving himself into a world of lies. No escape. 

_I'll never waste another day_

_Forever lost_

_No reason_

_He never chose to play this game_

_Taken too far out of control_

Smith felt a searing pain at the corners of his eyes. Pretending it was from the events of the day before and not from his own swamped feelings of helplessness, he turned from the moonlight and bolted from the room, trying to lose the chasing emotion at his heels.

Another form of his self-deception. 


	4. Chapter 3: Out of Control

**3: Out of Control**

The moon shone fully onto the Agent's face, caressing him in milky white covers of silk that tickled at his face, soothing his flaming emotions.

Emotions? But I thought I had lost them in that room. The bottle room smothered with blood, Smith thought, the moonlight reaching beyond his sunglasses. It irritated him and scorned him in the night. It lied to him. Making him believe he had human inside him.

Liar, you tempt me 

The blood was still calling out to him, running down the walls and into his eyes…

It smothered him so. He felt suffocated by the combination of the redness in his mind and the ice of the moon, itching to get behind his sunglasses and into his soul.

It wanted to freeze him. Yet Smith would suffice.

He would make sure he did. 

Smith was standing upon a lonely hill that overlooked the sleeping city. Lights, however, continued to peer at him from the gaping windows.

And he could just make out the shape of that cursed house that had suddenly become the centre of his insanity. His house, and his bottle.

Why did I murder those children? He thought, his eyes prickling with a now familiar wetness. Erasing their memory would have been sufficient enough.

I'm out of control.

_I don't know what to do_

No guilt is in my heart 

Yet… was it? Did he still have all the attributes that classed him as AI?

Or was he just ignoring the facts and reading the fiction? 

Deep inside, he knew he was denying all the truths in the Matrix. It may have been a world of lies and falsehoods, but somewhere out there, there were words whispered that told only what needed to be told. And Smith badly needed to be told that.

For as a machine, he deleted any chance there was of him being connected to the viruses, and pushed on with his purpose.

Yet he had totally ignored his meaning.

He was spiraling.

Out of control.


	5. Chapter 4: End

**4: End **

How could it return to how it was?

It was all a blurred mess in front of Smith's eyes. He couldn't see anymore, not even his denial held comfort for him.

The truth was looking at him right in the eyes. It was past his sunglasses. Past his barrier. And it told him:

You are a humanlike species, Smith.

And he heard the words coming from over the city as the sun rose to meet his gloom. It was here. The final day. He knew that his existence would decay if held in these thoughts of motion any more. Because the answer would never be found, not even by the Truth.

All the Truth did was tell him his composition, not his destination. And yet strangely, Smith knew his destination already.

He was going to meet it. Now.

***

Smith could not cry at his choice. Whether his tears had dried up by the will to stop trying or not, they just did not seem to flow in him anymore. 

He entered the government building where he had left his two colleagues the day before, and stepped inside the lift, carefully examining the button display.

His office was on floor 30. But he did not want to go there. His choice was not to carry on as if nothing had happened. His choice was… floor 66.

The Expiry Department. It meant… machines and programs considered useless or damaged beyond repair would be sent here, then…

Gone. Destroyed. Deleted.

Yet Smith knew his choice was right as the lift came alive and carried him to his destination. 

If he carried on, he would fade away anyway. There was no doubt about it. Smith knew it had to end here. Now. And he would forget about those stupid children and that stupid bottle.

In fact, he would forget about everything. 

Yet this thought did not disturb Smith. It soothed him until a triumphant smile reached his lips.

He had achieved everything he had needed to during his existence in the Matrix. Now it was time to call it a day. 

An endless and virtual day.

The lift doors opened. Stepping out, the Expiry Department sent out waves of darkness that called out to Smith and chased his troubles away. The better life leads here, it said to him…

And Smith found what he was looking for. He had walked past rows upon rows of deadly looking machines for almost every online program imaginable, leering at him like metal monsters from out of the depths of the infinite darkness, and upon seeing one machine that particularly stood out from the rest, he stood in front of it. He leaned in for a closer look. There was a single word engraved onto the front title panel.

SMITH

And below that (as the coldness in the room seemed to seep into Smith's suit and silence his rapid breathing), there was another panel, with a large red button placed next to it. This panel read:

PRESS TO DELETE

The button looked so attractive to Smith. It seemed to shine out from the darkness like some heavenly retreat into peace and sanity. It needed Smith to press it. 

Come on; press me, it said. Press me, press me…

And slowly, like a robot almost, automatically, Smith lifted up an arm and smiled with insane joy as his conscience told him he was doing the right thing. There would be other Smiths created in the future. He knew there would be. The Matrix always recycled programs. He would be back one day, more efficient than ever. And his smile told the darkness that as his final motions were captured in the reflection of the red button. 

_I don't know what to do_

I'm not the reason 

Smith pressed the button. Then everything went black.


	6. Epilogue: Awaken Again

Epilogue: Awaken Again  
  
Sometime in the distant future, maybe a year or two after the deletion of the program Agent Smith, a new dawn was arising upon the virtual scene of the Matrix. A sort of haze drifted lazily over the dreams of those encased in the system, and as it cleared, a beautiful and shining sun burned down and warmed the lives of all living dead.  
  
And yet this world did not mourn for Smith. In their lives, he had never even existed. But there was still a sort of sadness hovering over each artificial intelligence that existed, a sort of mourning going on deep inside of their hard drives. And though it did not show, they knew there would be a return.  
  
The day was new. Upon the long and winding road the rising vapour wavered in front of all shining eyes, and if one looked carefully enough, they would just be able to make out a humanlike shape advancing from the horizon. A new body to coexist with this new day.  
  
Black shoes, immaculately polished, crunched gently against the tarmac. Perfectly pressed suit, and matching black tie, joining the new harmony. And a new program moulded into this image, with a mask covering his eyes..  
  
This new figure that walked alone down this road..  
  
This new figure..  
  
Was not new at all.  
  
For this world had seen this familiar face before, and it greeted this figure, this old yet new figure, with its smiling sun. A day created just for this moment.  
  
Yes. Agent Smith had returned.  
  
He was not deleted, after all. He had awoken again to a new and torment free mind. Tainted no more. Decayed days over.  
  
This was a new dawn for this Agent.  
  
Smith stopped upon the road, and observed the orange glare of the sun's eye drifting down to bless him. He was new and improved. The reflections in his sunglasses told him. He could return and obey. No emotions.  
  
He smiled, and instead of freezing the day into despair, it lit up the sky until he actually felt a flutter inside his chest somewhere.  
  
Yes, he was back.  
  
And as Smith began to walk again into the heart of the Matrix, the sun seemed to whisper softly in his ear:  
  
"Awaken again, Smith.  
  
"No more self deception."  
  
:: END :: 


End file.
